No more buckling on dash for growth, PM

POLITICIANS, said Tony Benn, needed to be signposts, not weather vanes.

Not constantly spun around by the fickle winds of public opinion, but pointing the way ahead – unyielding in the face of criticism or challenge.

Liz Truss became Prime Minister indicating that, in tough times, she would be that ‘signpost’. Rather than chase positive headlines, she declared she had the iron will to take unpopular decisions based on what she believed was good for the country.

Well, that went well. Yesterday, not even a month into her fledgling leadership, she buckled at the first sign of trouble.

It was deeply humiliating that just 24 hours after insisting her plan to abolish the 45p top rate for income tax payers south of the Border was set in stone, she and Kwasi Kwarteng made a rapid U-turn.

Of course, it takes great strength of character and courage to stand up to a baying mob, especially a political one. But how depressing that they flunked the test so badly. For there were sound economic reasons for the tax break, a centrepiece of the Chancellor’s mini-Budget.

The reform sought to make it easier for the country to attract top talent and incentivise entrepreneurship, while asserting that earning good salaries for hard work is a virtue.

Look at the response from top-rate taxpayers and business leaders in Scotland, where the upper limit is 46p; they warned of a brain drain as people moved away to take advantage of the more relaxed rate south of Hadrian’s Wall and urged the SNP to follow the PM’s lead in a move that would help boost Scotland’s economy.

So why has the Government backpedalled? As soon as the proposal was unveiled, Labour and the SNP toxified it – squealing falsely and maliciously that the Tories were doing nothing but lining the rich’s pockets during a cost of living crisis.

And why was Labour’s hypocrisy not called out forcefully? After all, Miss Truss sought only to return the top rate to 40p – the level that existed throughout Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s 13-year rule, bar the final month.

The failure by ministers to explain and defend the policy, coupled with the timing of the announcement, has been naïve at best, inept at worst.

With the party’s popularity plummeting, it’s no wonder that a raft of Conservative MPs (whipped into a frenzy by embittered Rishi Sunak supporters and the anti-Tory broadcasters) showed all the spine of jellyfish and successfully got it scrapped.

The tragedy is, the mini-Budget was incredibly positive, with three hugely popular measures: unprecedented help with families’ energy bills, a penny off the basic rate of income tax for English taxpayers and the loathed national insurance hike spiked.

Miss Truss’s agenda, which rejects the failed high-tax, low-growth consensus of recent years, could help adrenalise the atrophying economy, creating jobs and prosperity. But enemies seem determined to destabilise her as she battles to lift Britain out of the economic doldrums.

Next in their sights is her plan to save £5billion in welfare payments to help meet the cost of the tax-cutting revolution and energy handouts.

The reality is, Miss Truss’s policies are the only hope of avoiding a Labour government propped up by the SNP and the Liberal Democrats.

Yet the rebels seem to hate her more than they fear Sir Keir Starmer and his Leftwing cranks seizing power.

While Labour’s leader poses as a centreground politician, no one should forget that he fought tooth-and-nail to get Marxist, anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn into No10. His class war, tax-and-spend policies would beggar Britain.